I’m planning to store data with a plugin, of literally 1 value, a topic id. What’s the best way to do this? Thanks.

If you only need to store a single Topic ID (like a configurable value), the simplest Discourse-native way is using a SiteSetting. You also get a built-in admin UI automatically. config/settings.yml: plugins: my_plugin_enabled: default: true client: false my_plugin_topic_id: default: 0 client: false type: topic # gives you a topic selector in admin UI In your Ruby plugin code: topic_id = SiteSetting.my_plugin_topic_id topic = Topic.find_by(id: topic_id) If you prefer to store it programmatically (not exposed as a setting), PluginStore is also fine for a single key-value: store = PluginStore.new("my_plugin") store.set("topic_id", some_topic_id) topic_id = store.get("topic_id")

I think PluginStore is the most suitable way. A site setting will not fit this use case. Thanks!

Your question reminded me of something I recently read on Meta. [image]How Discourse Uses Discourse “Are there any topics that talk about not using PluginStore anymore? Trying to figure out if I should use PluginStore or just make my own db table and columns in a plugin I’m working on,” the Discourse AI Bot responded with a helpful answer and even linked directly to our Development Styleguide describing exactly what I should use. [image]

I was just about to start - thanks for bringing this up. It seems like making a whole DB table for 1 value is overkill, and completely unnecessary. Any ideas?

What is the reason why you don’t want a site setting? It could be hidden so admins won’t see it, kind of like the IDs for the special topics in core, like TOS. config/site_settings.yml 908d590fe default: "summary" hidden: true client: true tos_topic_id: default: -1 hidden: true guidelines_topic_id: default: -1 hidden: true privacy_topic_id: default: -1 hidden: true welcome_topic_id: default: -1 hidden: true admin_quick_start_topic_id: default: -1 hidden: true client: true

My use case is this: any topic or post created from the time the plugin is enabled is synced and stored somewhere else. But topics before that aren’t, so I have to run a job to sync those, perhaps in batches of 100. I need to store the lowest topic I’d so the next batch is that minus 100, and so on.

Chatbot does something very similar. Here is the migration: db/migrate/20240217010103_create_chatbot_post_embeddings_bookmark_table.rb main # frozen_string_literal: true class CreateChatbotPostEmbeddingsBookmarkTable < ActiveRecord::Migration[7.0] def change create_table :chatbot_post_embeddings_bookmark do |t| t.integer :post_id t.timestamps end end end This only ever has one record :slight_smile:

That’s good - at least I’m not the only one :laughing:… my next hurdle is how to run the migration - in a dev Discourse site or something else… wouldn’t running the migration then just add to Discourse’s migrations directory? Should I copy the file manually? Thanks.

You place it, as per all plugin migrations, in the plugin (just like Chatbot above). You run migrations with LOAD_PLUGINS=1 rake db:migrate Read up on migrations here: [image] Active Record Migrations — Ruby on Rails Guides Migrations are a feature of Active Record that allows you to evolve your database schema over time. Rather than write schema modifications in pure SQL, migrations allow you to use a Ruby Domain Specific Language (DSL) to describe changes to your...

I know, the only thing I don’t get is that I’m supposed to write the minute and second manually as I create the file?

What's the best way to store data with a plugin?

Development

Moin November 19, 2025, 8:30am 4

Your question reminded me of something I recently read on Meta.

Topic		Replies	Views
What are appropriate uses of PluginStore? Development	12	1772	July 6, 2020
Where can I view the use of PluginStoreRow? Development	3	915	April 3, 2018
How to use the database without destroying Discourse? Development	4	1259	September 28, 2016
Adding a method `get_like` to PluginStore class Development	7	1197	August 8, 2019
Create custom db table and fields from plugin Development	8	4327	October 16, 2019

What's the best way to store data with a plugin?

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